clair075

I've been thinking a lot about the challenges that midsized and larger companies face when trying to do more innovation. It's not a secret that they need to do more innovation; everyone knows this.  It's not really a secret what innovation is, or what the potential benefits might look like.  We've seen the results of good innovation in the marketplace.  It's not that people are stupid and don't understand how to innovate, although many are more comfortable with existing methods and tools, and haven't been trained in new innovation tools or perspectives.  But training and tool introduction isn't a major barrier. No, the recurring theme of failing to innovate in a corporate setting has more to do with the failure to find things and discover things.  I'd like to address what you need to find and discover, because if we can name the barriers or challenges, we may be able to eliminate them and accelerate innovation. What do you need to find in order to in...

The more we learn, the more we discover that innovation is vital to renew businesses of all sizes.  Those that undertake significant innovation activities seem to grow and prosper.  Those that neglect innovation seem to wither away.  Executives understand this.  More importantly, markets understand this.  And when markets understand and signal something, executives get on board.  Innovation, therefore, is an important component of future success of many companies, and executives understand this.  That's the good news. The bad news is that while the expectations and demands for innovation grow ever larger, the capabilities to conduct successful innovation haven't grown nearly as fast.  In fact the knowing/doing gap for innovation in major corporations is probably the largest its ever been.  People in the trenches simply don't have the time or the training to conduct anything more than incremental innovation.  Corporate reward systems, cul...

Last week I attended an interesting program co-sponsored by the University of North Carolina's health care innovation program and AARP .  The program was set up to bring together people who had an interest in solving problems relating to prescription drug use.  Far too many people are prescribed medications but don't fill the prescription or don't use the medications as prescribed. The program bought together people from different universities, different industries and other organizations to try to generate ideas around solving the issue of non-compliance.  More interestingly, the organizers hoped that there would be enough interest and passion in the group that teams would form to consider methods or technologies that could address the problem. It's clear that these kinds of "sprints" are growing in importance, and interesting when you consider that some of the teams that form are formed on the fly, built of people from different organizations.  Most of the p...

In what should come as no surprise to many of us working in the innovation space, a McKinsey study revealed in October 2016 that 84% of CEOs think innovation is important for their growth.  This is not new news and is actually a substantial increase from previous surveys conducted by BCG and others, where the numbers routinely suggested that anywhere from 66% to 75% of CEOs thought innovation was important.  The real news that McKinsey released has to do with results.  In the same survey McKinsey found that 6% of CEOs felt that their innovation efforts were satisfactory.  If the data is true this represents a complete and utter failure of innovation to deliver the value that the CEOs expected.  Even venture capital investors expect a 1 in 7 or at worst a 1 in 10 return.  The 100 Meter High Hurdles So, clearly we've overcome the first hurdle.  Everyone believes that innovation is important.  The challenge with this first hurdle is that, like the 10...

I've been giving a lot of thought to the concept of waves of history, or periods of change.  For example, not all that long ago a group of workers in England decided to try to stymie change, by destroying the looms that they felt were replacing their jobs.  The "Luddites" as they were called, were afraid of looming (sorry, couldn't pass it up) change and the incumbent shift in jobs and roles as automation replaced manual labor.  I'm oversimplifying here - there were many other factors that led to the Luddite revolt, but a lot of the anger that was displayed was focused on change, and the loss of status and skill.  In that day, people made things.  They prided themselves on their skills and knowledge about how to make things. From makers of things to providers of services Over time, we've accepted to some degree industrialization and even automation.  Increasingly we see factory workers here in the US rapidly replaced by machines, robots and artificial intel...